House with a pool

[MrsMummaButterfly]

Which region are you looking in?

Perth so lovely HOT summers 🤣

[MLadyEm]

Hi ladies

Just wanting some advice from anyone who has a pool at home?

We are looking to hopefully buy our first home this year and we have been talking pros and cons of wanting to have a pool.

One con is that we are worried that it wont get used as much as we are thinking.

Would love advice, pros and cons from people

We recently bought a house with a pool. It’s expensive when it comes to maintenance, but it’s great. DD loves it and asks to go in most days. I find it hard when it’s just me and both kids as DS isn’t a fan if the water is too cold. But I’m a huge fan. I like doing laps even though it’s only 6ish metres I did 200 laps on Tuesday. I’d love to get heating but DH says it’s too hard to retrofit? The max temp the pool has got up to so far is about 30 deg. I’d love it a bit warmer for poor DS. Although we have a massive lillypilly bush at the end that we’re going to cut back/down so that may help the warmth aspect as the back fence faces south.

[babyno1onboard]

We recently bought a house with a pool. It’s expensive when it comes to maintenance, but it’s great. DD loves it and asks to go in most days. I find it hard when it’s just me and both kids as DS isn’t a fan if the water is too cold. But I’m a huge fan. I like doing laps even though it’s only 6ish metres I did 200 laps on Tuesday. I’d love to get heating but DH says it’s too hard to retrofit? The max temp the pool has got up to so far is about 30 deg. I’d love it a bit warmer for poor DS. Although we have a massive lillypilly bush at the end that we’re going to cut back/down so that may help the warmth aspect as the back fence faces south.

Our pool dude said that we can retrofit heating. A few of our friends have done it too. Maybe easier than your DH thinks? Or maybe your setup is different.

[BigRedV]

Our pool only got heating a few months ago and we’ve had our pool in for nearly 2 years.

[BigRedV]

I am not far from Sydney so our summers are hot. Our pool temp is set to 28 and I find it’s refreshing but not cold or hot.

[Stretched]

Perth so lovely HOT summers 🤣

We had a rental about an hour south of Perth, slightly more inland so if anything often hotter than Perth. It was inground concrete saltwater but the solar heating was broken.

We then had one here in Vic (basically Melbourne weather where we are). Like PP, above ground style with vinyl liner but set in. Chlorine with sand filter. It was here and old when we moved in. We had to patch a few tears in the vinyl.

The saltwater was much less daily upkeep than the chlorine. Our neighbour converted theirs to saltwater and love it.

We got a crawling cleaner when we bought here, as the WA pool needed scrubbing now and then. Worthy investment.

Leaf litter and evaporation were issues needing upkeep. We were on tank water in WA, so that made it a bit stressful at times. Both places we've had to do a daily surface scoop - better to get them before they fall as they could jam the cleaner. In Vic we got a bubble cover thinking it would help with both - made it almost impossible to keep the levels right and turned the pool green after 2 days every time we tried it! We shut it down the 1st winter but it cost hundreds in chemicals to get it back to good so we ran it on a winter schedule after that. The saltwater pool was cheap to run through winter.

One of the biggest factors will be the two of you. I am not much for swimming. I would only get in if it was over 35 (therefore more in WA). DH would swim any chance he'd get - but is always working!! Also, the kids would want to swim all the time. This was great as it meant they were strong swimmers, but they always need supervision. This means me either in with them (when young) or supervising by the poolside. So it took up a lot of my time. It's really going to be about who will be out there with the kids, if they love being in a pool and if they are available enough.

Our neighbours (here in Vic) love having a pool and are in it every time it's over 25! They love having a pool (they put it in about 7 years ago).

Ours here started collapsing, so we decommissioned it at the end of last summer (not cheap, even with DH's excavation connections, but cheaper than new frame, liner and install). I don't miss it but the kids do.

Edit to add, if either pool had heating I would have been happier to go in more but still not heaps.

[Mod-Wise Enough]

We don’t have a heater of any kind. Kids started swimming September 2 this year. We’re Melbourne and it was 11 degrees . I like a cold pool, nothing worse than a warm pool on a hot day.

As previous posters have mentioned it’s great for wearing the kids out, but it was stressful before they could swim. However it did help them swim at an early age, DD2 could swim before she was 2. We double gates, so our gate is on a corner with a small fenced square inside. You have to get through two gates to get to the pool. I’ve seen our gate not shut properly on occasion, so I’m glad there’s double protection.

[PomPoms]

We live in QLD and have a pool. As the kids get older they are using it less, that said they do use it when their friends are over.

It's a pain to look after! We now have a pool man who does it all for us. We have a robot cleaner (we put in a couple of times a week) as depending on what you have falling in your pool the creepy crawleys can block up.

Don't get a bit pool as the water stays freezing until about Feb. Our pool is still too cold (it's 100,000L). Don't have palm trees around the pool they drop leaves and seeds all year round.

Honestly, I don't know if we would bother getting a house with a pool again.

[bezzy]

Just on this, I think the kind of heater you get depends on your location. Where I am, solar would be no good. I live in the mountains in a national park which means the nights are cold even in spring and autumn. Even summer nights cool down a bit with all the trees and we back onto bush. We put in an inverter heat pump. Solar would only warm up the pool by 2 degrees max and that wouldn’t help in April or September.

We live in the Gold Coast hinterland. It stays at around 30 (I like it hot lol) from about Oct-March, and a month or two either side in the higher 20s. Kids are in right now. It doesn’t heat up as much when we have quite a few overcast days here in a row.

[Fi Poledancer]

Perth here too. I never wanted a pool but DH did, and I have to admit it is great for kids. My boys are only 5, 3 & 1 but the older 2 have been loving it for over a year now, it tires them out and they have become such confident swimmers. Ours is quite cold so I probably wouldn't voluntarily get in it without the kids nagging me to 🤣 maintenance is quite expensive but I think hubby likes tinkering away with it and keeping it nice, it hasn't gone green yet so that's a win